Yup. That's the kind of hard-core Starriors fan I am. An auction for Starriors napkins came up on eBay, and I just could not refuse. I mentioned this to some friends, and while they very much understood my desire for the item, they quickly asked how much I was actually willing to pay to secure them. $5? $25? $50? I confess, my max bid was in the area of $20, but the auction went to me for the starting bid of $3, which truly proves that no one else is as hard-core as I am. I might use them one day, if I ever hosted an event with people who would appreciate them. I cannot for the life of me conceive of such an event now, but we can't rule it out.

The foreground of the napkin shows Hotshot, the good guy leader, using the same art as from the cover of the second mini-comic. Curiously, though, the background shows one of the other good guys (Cut-Up) shooting the leader of the bad guys (Slaughter Steelgrave) in the back. Not a very heroic thing, methinks.

Of more exciting news to me, Starriors-wise, is the discovery that in addition to the European variant (see my R.A.T.S. gallery), there was apparently a Japanese variant which I am just now learning about. Also called RATS (ラッツ), I can't believe that in my last five years of Starriors-hunting, I am only now learning of this. All thanks go to Richard Miske, who tipped me off and has some great pictures of them on the Starriors page of his Zoids site (though personally I enjoy his collection of SMEAT even more).

Of course, now I have to own all of these toys. This is going to be difficult. Japanese auction sellers are notoriously unwilling to deal with non-Japanese speakers or ship overseas. There are various services online specifically designed to broker these transactions through proxy bidding and shipping, but they're expensive. In time, I will do this, but for now, I will just quietly weep like the round-eyed gaijin I am.

Any chance you can put up scans of the minicomics? I have found memories of the time the Protectors help Crickey and he in turn saves them from Deadeye.

» Posted 6.21.2007 11:30:20 by Slim

I actually started scanning the pages of a minicomic at one point, but I backed off on it because:

1) the file size for each page was huge2) they're on eBay... cheap!

Really, other than minicomic 5 or 6, which are slightly more rare, the first four are on eBay for about $1 each. I was actually considering trying to buy a bunch of both the minicomics and regular comics and selling them directly off starriors.com for a small profit, but I don't think it would yield enough dollars to be worth it.

» Posted 6.21.2007 19:43:19 by Botch - WEBMASTER

You are right, they are cheap. I haven't read The Wall or Honor, and I think I might as well complete my (US) Starrior collection anyway. BTW, you seen the MJ zombie cover yet?